Expanding the Menu

If you know anything about me, I am TOTALLY a creature of habit.  If I find something I like, I will eat it until I'm sick of eating it.  When I did weight watchers a long time ago, I figured out a meal that worked for me for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and I stuck with the same 3 meals for weeks at a time!  It was easy...not the best for me, I'm sure, but easy.  Then, when I got into the Atkins diet, I was pretty simple there too.  I ate a lot of meat, cheese and a bit of vegetables.  Cheeseburgers without the bun was the standard fare in my household then.  Now, on P90X (since I'm taking the portions approach), I find that I slip into the same habits.  I eat a protein shake for breakfast, almonds for a snack, salad with some meat on it for lunch, jerky for snack and then whatever for dinner.  Usually, dinner ended up being a 10-egg white omelet with whatever I still needed to consume cooked inside it.  I would leave myself 1 snack to have a couple pure fruit bars at the end of the night, but try not to wait too long so I'm not eating within 3 hours of going to bed.  I do vary from this plan a bit, but never really a far departure from the daily routine of food consumption.

To give you some perspective on how other people do things, my in-laws (a few years back) made the decision to change how they ate.  They switched to a doctor-suggested nutritional plan that was pretty low carb/high protein.  My mother-in-law, the whiz-cook that she is, comes up with these ridiculous recipes that taste amazing and fall within the requirements of their nutritional plan.  Now...they do have their "staples" that they rely on each day...I'm pretty sure quiche was a regular food item for them for a while, but they have a big variety in what they eat each day.

So....long story, not quite so long, it is my NEW goal to try and dive into the world of P90X recipes.  They look good, but I just haven't taken the time to make them.  Yesterday...that changed!  Since I'm now in Phase II of the diet plan, I have been granted the blessing of more carbohydrates. SO...I flipped through the P90X recipe book and found a recipe for Oatmeal Pancakes.  I wasn't sure what to expect...I knew they would taste "healthy" and sometimes that isn't always a favorable taste. But...since I'm the type of dad that treats Saturday mornings as "breakfast with dad" days, I thought I'd give a new recipe a chance.  Usually we either do pancakes, waffles, French toast, or my own creation...French pan-toast (which is taking a thinner pancake batter to dip the bread instead of an egg wash).  I'm not going to lie...I was a little scared.  My twins weren't around since they were with my parents, but my biggest food critic seems to be my 2 year old (Sarah).  If the pancakes weren't a hit with her, breakfast would become a challenge.  As it turns out, it was a pretty enjoyable experience.  I actually let Sarah help me with the ingredients.  She had a good time and we had some pretty cute daddy-daughter moments.  When the pancake batter was mixed, I felt a bit more comfortable...it looked almost like "normal" pancake batter...a bit chunky, but relatively normal.  I was excited, she was excited...plan was going well.  When we were done with cooking the pancakes, we sat down and enjoyed them.  They tasted really good!!  We don't introduce too many sweets into our children's diet until they are a bit older, so Sarah doesn't know what syrup is yet.  She eats pancakes alone and is usually pretty happy.  Yesterday, while eating pancakes, we shared a 1/2 cup of all natural (no sugar added) applesauce.  We used that as pancake dip and the meal was a hit.  The nice thing for me was that I could eat 4 and only use one unit of carbohydrates.  I ate 6.  She at almost 3 of them.  My wife, Bekah, tried them and she liked them also, so they may become a new addition to the "breakfast with dad" menu.  I'm sure Beachbody, Tony, and anyone else affiliated with P90X will be angry with me, but I'm sharing the recipe below.  If you give them a shot, know that they make 16 pancakes per batch.  I'd love to get feedback from you on them!!  I think you'll enjoy them.

I hope you have a great day!  If you are into reading blogs, a good friend of mine, Chris, is also doing the P90X program with his wife and he is blogging too.  He's about a month behind me, but I'm sure he'd appreciate people reading his blog too!  Here's the link to his blog:  http://p90xcurryfamily.blogspot.com/.

Thanks and keep reading...and I'll keep "pressing play"!!


Oatmeal Pancakes

1/2 cup quick-cooking oats
1/2 cup low-fat buttermilk
1/2 cup skim milk
2 egg whites
1 T canola oil
2 T brown sugar, packed
1/2 tsp salt, or to taste
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp baking soda


I varied the recipe to utilize the ingredients that I had in my kitchen.  Here are the changes:
1.  I used Old Fashioned Oats instead of the suggested Quick Oats.

2.  I used Olive Oil instead of Canola Oil.

3.  I used 1 cup of skim milk instead of 1/2 cup skim and 1/2 cup low-fat buttermilk
4.  Since I only used skim milk, I omitted the baking soda and increased the baking powder by 1 tsp.  Not sure what that does, but I read it in an old cookbook and just kept doing it through the years...

Before attempting the recipe, soak the oats in the milk for about 15 minutes to soften them.  Then add the entire mixture to the other ingredients.  When spooning the batter onto your griddle (or whatever you use), use 1/8 measuring cup.  That will yield 16 pancakes about 4" in diameter.